Relevant Links

Relevant to last night's conversation at Stitch & Bitch, anyway, and I see no reason why the rest of you wouldn't find these interesting:

An educational page on "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema". Source text from the American Anthropological Association may be found here in PDF format. Natural History Magazine also had an article on "The Mysterious Fall of the Nacirema", but I have not yet had the chance to read that one through.

What I vaguely remembered last night, and many people do not know, is that the oldest known mummified remains in the world are the Chinchorro mummies found in Chile and Peru. Wikipedia article here. "These Chinchorro mummies were significant to history because during the periods of these mummies, everyone who died was mummified, including children, new-borns and fetuses. This shows us that it was not reserved for those of high rank or high status. The mummification was not a sign of stratification." Archaeology Magazine had an article on "Making the Dead Beautiful: Mummies as Art", and there are plenty of other things you can find online if you do a search for Chinchorro mummies.

I Wuz Tagged!

megthelegend tagged me last weekend, but I was too icky-feeling to respond properly then. This is what she tagged me with:

List seven "songs" you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your LJ along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they're listening to.

Now, you young people may download "songs" and think you're cool, but some of us more ancient folks listen to these things called "albums." Sure, they require some kind of concentration to listen to all the way through, but more than a few of them are worth the effort.

Oh, all right, I'll name seven "songs" anyway. But they're mostly from two different albums.

First, I've been listening to the album Grit by the late great Martyn Bennett. On his final album, Martyn combined samples of old records of (mostly) traditional singing that he grew up listening to with his own instrumentation, both electronic and acoustic. "Split between the songs of traveling people (Roma) and the Gaelteachd traditions of the Hebrides, it brings together by far the strongest links to the 'real' folk culture in Scotland. Virtually all the songs and narrative were sampled from vinyl records or from original quarter-inch tape recordings, the sources of which were mostly recorded from 1950 onwards." Listeners to the album seem to be split on whether it's utterly brilliant melding of old and new or obnoxiously noisy dance music clashing with singers who could do better. I love it. The three songs most likely to go running through my head at any moment (especially when I first wake up in the morning) are:
1. "Nae Regrets"
2. "Ale House"
3. "Liberation"

Thanks to a TV show last week, the fourth song I've been listening to is
4. Styx, "Renegade"
which musesfool uploaded, so I don't even have to rely on the incomplete version which would otherwise be running through my head.

Before I got the chance to download the Styx song, though, I tried to find a way to drive it out of my mind using other music from my collection. I finally settled on No Reasons Given, an early group project featuring the late great Kevin Gilbert (who I think was a teenager at the time?). If you are interested in really obscure 1980s progressive pop, the 16 songs are available for free online, assuming the official Kevin Gilbert site is able to serve you at the time, which sadly isn't always the case. If you can download the songs, however, the three I've been listening to the most recently are
5. "If Ever Rain Will Fall" (which goes running through my head at random moments anyway)
6. "Masques"
7. "Tired Old Man" (which reminds me that it's been too long since I read Pinocchio)